12:52: looks like my NatWest account is getting interfered with again

I just conducted a little test and exactly what I thought would happen just happened. I am actively being interfered with again. at least on my computer or internet connection. I just approved a payment in my NatWest app. It’s not going out, not arriving.

Why did I want to make that specific payment? Because I desperately want out of my sadistic slavery situation.

This sort of interference has happened a million times before in the past decade.

Example: I want to pay for my internet by bankcard and am being forced to go buy a top up voucher. When I anticipate and buy a top-up voucher in advance, I suddenly no longer have the option to top up by voucher but need to use my bankcard.

So… I didn’t actually fix the NatWest app this morning. The app I have is a fake, somehow. Doctored.

A few weeks ago, an outgoing payment also simply disappeared. Had to enter it a second time.

Zero response

etc etc etc.

I’ve been desperately wanting my life back for so long. I’m not perfect and I am not male, but I deserve to get to live MY LIFE again, like I used to.

There were many more others I could have e-mailed, but then the mail would have been flagged as spam. There are also many others who I can no longer e-mail because quite a few women in science who I used to know passed away in their 50s.

I can’t just roll over and quietly crawl into a corner like I am “supposed” to do, dammit.

I’ve previously contacted my embassy (secretly and anonymously, from a computer at Advice Portsmouth before they got hacked in 2016, but all that embassy and consulate staff can do is potentially visit you in prison if you end up in prison; it’s not the same as when you are stranded somewhere as a tourist) as well as the United Nations (from my office computer, which just got me postal junk mail asking for donations). I had wanted to know if there was some way that I could get refugee status in my home country if I fled from Portsmouth.

8:59: What does this tell you?

 
Remember that I also have a hacked phone that is telling me that my NatWest banking app will stop working within 6, sorry now 5, days and a printer that is suddenly missing its drivers. All at the same time.

This is the kind of nonsense I’ve been dealing with ever since I moved into my current flat, but hey, “I am just an old cow who can’t handle technology”. May I remind you that my webpage about the bit of IT background I have disappeared from this site, too, all by itself?

9:12: the screens have gone back to normal again

I’d switched on the computer at around 8:30. I’d overslept, yes. Deserves the death penalty, I know, Portsmouth.

09:30: NatWest banking app issue resolved. (Meanwhile, made 11 bucks trading, too; am slowly making my way back toward overcoming the experience I had last year, the losses caused by the stupid “football matches” hackers last year, the idiots that left me a message about their experience with betting on football matches, yes, just in case I was not quite sure what exactly was going on. The fact that I had warned them that I was going to put in losing trades and let them run if they didn’t stop fucking with me and then went ahead and did it, didn’t entirely stop them from fucking with me but it did help A LOT. They or he had made the fatal mistake of getting me into the position in which I literally had nothing left to lose, after they had literally taken everything from me that I had achieved or that had mattered to me. I started trading because I wanted to get out of Portsmouth asap – escape! get my life back! – and because I can no longer travel when it’s too cold.)

09:48: now tackling the printer driver issues again. I thought nothing useful had downloaded other than perhaps a tar ball archive, which I just found in my downloads, but which previous versions of the operating system and I never managed to handle, but my current version does seem to know how to deal with it.



10:00: Let’s see if that did the trick…

10:01: yes

But nobody in Portsmouth is fucking with me, right? People in Portsmouth are all sweet little angels who knit and tend to their gardens all day, and do little else but smile oh so sweetly, except when they don’t and give you the full blast of their blind hatred.

23:30

Someone left the flat below at about that time and it’s been empty since. I didn’t bother to go check if my computer screens are working again now.

Btw, posting from this Android is now was briefly getting interfered with too. I was able to use it unhindered at Starbucks for a while, a place where I could work and feel safe, part of the world, feel normal AND… sometimes change passwords, unseen.

I bought that tablet without the locals having spotted it, took the train to elsewhere, paid cash for my train ticket, paid cash for the tablet. It was a steal, at 50% of its market value, just because it was used. I probably have the cost of living crisis to thank for that, because a lot of people here are desperate and all they do is whip up each other’s despair instead of help empower each other.

One day, I walked in and a young blond woman behind the counter greeted me with a shocking level of hate, sort of the same ice cold hate that that guy called Ashley greeted me with last week, at Cash Converters, no idea why. Okay, worse, probably.

The next time I visited that Starbucks, it got interfered with, this tablet. I was gutted. Too fucking crazy for words.

The tablet that I showed you, Ashley, on the other hand, was a decoy. I did sell it to someplace else and lost no money on it.

(I simply got fed up with the bizarre nonsense of needing a decoy tablet in this fucked-up crazy town, Ashley. Have you ever traveled off Portsea Island, dude? Do you know what the world is like outside of this little island enclave off the coast of England? Or course not. You live in a tiny bubble in which any female manager is only the manager in name, for the stats, but has zero power.)

But let’s be fair, these folks – like this Ashley dude – somehow have been gaslighted about me. There’s just no way that complete strangers can hate a person they know nothing about that fiercely completely out of the blue.

(No wonder I have hated Portsmouth so much. No wonder people here thought that I was the crazy one.)

Same thing probably happened when I volunteered at the Covid vaccination effort late in 2021. Why did so many people there think that I was (basically) senile even though none of them knew me? Makes no sense.

I’d seen that John guy before. On his bike. Maybe half a year earlier.

Twice. I noticed him because the first time he saw me, he smiled at me as if he knew me. Or at least knew who I was. Recognized me. The next time he saw me, he ignored me. Maybe he simply hadn’t seen me, that second time. Both times, I had been on my way to Asda.

Don’t know exactly when that was, but it was after I had posted a video about local politics or written about it. Back then, I figured that that is why he thought he knew me and smiled at me.

You know, when someone gets deliberately isolated by some evil person out there, you start noticing certain things much more. Because you have so few interactions. You notice and remember things you would not have paid any attention to whatsoever in a normal context.

Why couldn’t I get anyone to let me volunteer in 2020 and why couldn’t I get access to any of the local Covid Facebook groups back then, only a tiny one for some small village elsewhere? Why couldn’t I reach almost anyone else around here back then?

Everyone around here always whines about how they don’t have enough of this kind of staff or that kind of staff or that kind of services or this kind, but when you think that you can do something about it and make yourself useful, it almost always turns out to be no more than the usual whining that has become part of people’s identity around here. There is no actual need. It’s just whining. It’s just stuff to fill up Facebook and newspaper space with.

For nearly 15 years, I’ve had little more than horrible abuse in this town. It makes no sense. I knew nobody here and nobody here knew me. Where did all that bizarre hate come from? It just makes no sense. None whatsoever.

No matter where I went in this town, no matter what I did. It always reared its ugly head. Even though I wasn’t always aware of it at first, such as at that community leadership course in 2010.

Who had been gaslighting all these people about me? Because that is what must have happened.

Who exactly in this town is that unstable and evil one? That’s for them to figure out. Me, I couldn’t care less.

Because the gaslighting still has exposed this town’s soul to me, hasn’t it. The level of hate I’ve encountered here is beyond belief, after all.

Most people here show no reticence at all when they target someone who they’ve been made to believe is going senile or is learning-disabled or has some other kind of circumstance going on that they think makes it unlikely that the person will fight back.

That’s despicable, Portsmouth, gaslighting or no gaslighting.

Meanwhile, I continue to get lots of emails for how to pay less to unleash my secret genius if only I sign up quickly. Last-minute deals. I don’t need no unleashing of my secret genius. I just want my life back. That’s genius enough for me, thank you very much.

Thatched-roof building fires

I used to be so worried that he’d set that fire, each time I heard of a thatched-roof building going up in flames, all within a decent driving distance. One time, I wondered if he stood there, watching the fire brigade do what they still could.

When a nearby garage or car dealership had a fire, I worried if he had had a hand in that too, because of how he was always going on about cars, about people being like cars.

I stopped concerning myself about such matters a long time ago. If people want to be blind, that’s their choice. Nobody ever got hurt in the fires, I noticed. So there was only material damage and I figured it helped him get rid of anger.

Because it always seemed to follow anger to do with me.

That was in the days before animals started to get attacked and inanimate stuff in my house started getting messed with too. Roughly between 2010 and 2015 or 16.

I have no idea whether that, the fires, was him or not.

(No, I’m not joking. I wish. Somehow, I don’t think that the garage fire had anything to do with him; that was just me jumping to conclusions because it was so close and about cars and because he was always going on about cars. It was around Queens Road or thereabouts, btw. But the thatched roof fires, that may be a different story.)

15:01

Had to flip the power switch on the wall again. Computer froze.

Am starting to get a little tense again now. It takes up about 10 minutes each time, so it’s not that easy to ignore and I was actually trying to concentrate on a few things.

This is when I will often do something distracting next, such as watch a funny YouTube short, which is like a mini vacation to reset my state of mind or I do something else to relax. Just realizing that I am getting tense helps too.

If it happens a lot, though, I may have to stop what I was doing, for the day, because it’s a little like driving a car and the car displaying a mind of its own and insisting on hitting the curb or insisting on suddenly swerving to the left or right. If it were a car, you’d want to park it too, right?

13:21

Computer increasingly sluggish, froze, had to flip the wall socket’s switch.

Not doing anything in particular.

By contrast, edited a few videos yesterday without problems and had a shit load of browser tabs open without problems.

It suddenly reminds me of young Chris Packham’s determination to own a kestrel.

Dead crows strung up on the doorstep

Chris Packham calls it “hate terrorism” and he is fighting it.

I knew about the arson attacks. I did not know about the dead birds.

(Am I, too, “merely” the target of hate terrorism? I have called it “domestic terrorism” a few times.)

Why are people out there going after Chris Packham? Because they’re old-fashioned yet powerful Tories who won’t give up their privileges such as burying a live fox trapped in a bag so that hounds can dig it up and tear it to shreds during a hunt. I can’t think of anything else.

He can pinpoint a hunting publication that whips up hate against him. They’re basically a British version of the NRA in the US. The Guardian wrote the following about it:

This month, it posted a photograph to its Facebook group of a “Trophy room” it had digitally mocked up, featuring Packham’s head mounted on a plaque, as though he were an animal it had killed in a hunting trip.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/mar/30/chris-packham-crowdfunds-to-sue-hunting-publisher-for-hate-terrorism

(I’m not a BBC presenter, though, and few Tories will ever have heard of me.)

I quite like Chris Packham. Nobody should have to go through the tremendous fear and upset something like an arson attack causes. Finding dead animals on your doorstep is not particularly reassuring either. That Packham has Asperger’s does not mean that his fear and upset aren’t justified. Anyone would be afraid and upset after something like this. You’d have to be very abnormal, psychologically speaking, not to be.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/support-chris-packhams-libel-action/

The particular challenge Packham faces is that in Britain, it is seen as whiny, weak and feminine – not manly enough – if you stand up against something like this.

That’s why the hunting publication wrote the following under the “Trophy Room” image on Facebook:

“My three demands. I want pocket money. I want Fieldsports Channel to stop being horrid about me. I want more pocket money.”

But of course Packham should stand up against this! Of course he has to. If he doesn’t, it will be taken as implicit consent to abuse.

“Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women”

This is exactly what I was thinking about when the above popped up on my screen. The way older single female adults in the UK are demonized and often subsequently criminalized, I find that quite shocking.

So here is a book by Victoria Smith and it’s been reviewed in The Guardian, under the subtitle “A compelling account of ageism and misogyny that overemphasises feminism’s generational divide”. Turns out that I got that wrong… I’ll come back to that.

My first thought was that it’s British (or English?) thinking that causes this sharp generational divide. The demonisation of older adults in the UK is well documented.

But no, this is not a book review, but a review of an American film and the review is by Victoria Smith.

A little bit later… No, it IS about a book. WTF? The book is by Victoria Smith and the review is by Fiona Sturges, who must be English because only English folks are able to confuse me this much. Maybe the review has been rewritten and maybe someone else chose a movie scene instead of a book cover to start it with, though. Who’s to say?

So who is Victoria Smith? “a feminist writer, with a particular interest in motherhood and intersections of misogyny and ageism” At least that bit adds up.

I disagree with Sturges’ conclusion, namely that men are women’s biggest and most powerful oppressors. Women oppressing other women versus women empowering each other is a major measure of how balanced a society is in that respect. After I moved to England, from Amsterdam, an Englishman who has not lived here for decades told me that the UK couldn’t be sexist, let alone misogynist, because Mary Beard was also being attacked by women.

Self-hatred is a common symptom of oppression, isn’t? Ask any “battered wife”. Taught contempt for one’s own kind may be another.

If anything, it sounds as if the emphasis in this book is too much on sexual activities and on being considered “fuckable”. Maybe that emphasis was added by Sturges. If so, it is pretty… sexist. There is more to women than their genitalia. Isn’t that the battle we are fighting? To move beyond the emphasis on genitalia and on how different people use them differently?

I sometimes encounter (very) young women who underline over and over again that they’re pregnant, but they are not making me feel “old” or “past my sell-by date”. If the bizarre emphasis on their pregnancy makes me feel anything at all, it’s sad regrets for them, in view of the sacrifices they are making. I usually keep that to myself because we do not all want the exact same things from life, nor should we want to. Sometimes, I even want to say “that’s pretty damn stupid of you, then” if they also get shouted at a lot because in that case, that pregnancy is keeping them trapped in an abusive relationship. That’s tragic. It becomes even less of a cause for celebration or gloating or glee when I next ask myself what is going to happen to that child.

I never say to them what I am thinking for the simple reason that I don’t know their story and because it’s not true that only older women have wisdom at their beck and call. I’m not having a conversation with them. I may actually just want them to go away, nothing more.

Young women are not the problem, though, and neither are men. Misogyny is the problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/29/hags-the-demonisation-of-middle-aged-women-by-victoria-smith-review

New! School meals! Now available at Dutch schools!

Me, I am familiar with 1960s “school milk”, but school meals? Nope.

The Dutch are introducing them now, free meals, but unlike in the UK, the government leaves it up to the schools how they use the budget.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2469299-programma-gratis-schoolmaaltijden-begonnen-kinderen-kunnen-ook-waardebon-krijgen

Schools with 30% or more pupils from low-income families can now apply for free meals.

The Dutch government has allocated 100 million euros for 300,000 children in primary and secondary education.

“Op is op”, for the schools. First come, first served.

They can then for example, for 9 euros per child:

  • Offer breakfast or lunch
  • Fill a fridge with healthy food.
  • Hire a catering firm

They can also opt for only supporting the poorest families by offering them Red Cross vouchers of 11 euro per child, which can be spent at any supermarket.

Red Cross and Youth Education Foundation school liaison officers are supporting the schools, so that organizing the food won’t burden teachers too much.

Social landlord in England said mould was ‘acceptable’ in refugees’ homes

This is otherisation. It is caused by over ten years of Tory rhetoric, which probably started at the time when Theresa May was Home Secretary and launched a policy called “the hostile environment”.

Wasn’t she also the one who suggested that refugees only came here to kill Britain’s beautiful swans? Do you remember cat-gate, too, Theresa May spreading the falsehood that human rights mean that if a terrorist has a cat he cannot be deported?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/28/social-landlord-england-said-mould-acceptable-refugees-homes

He died.

Shootings…

Shit. While I was watching a 1993 film about a guy who became obsessed with his colleague Laura Black and shot up the California computer firm where they both worked, apparently leading to the first stalking legislation in the US, someone in Tennessee shot up a primary school. The 129th mass shooting in the US this year and March isn’t even over.

Houston, we have a problem. And it needs fixing. Urgently.

Great security tip!

This just popped up in my YouTube stream and I subscribed (unsubbed shortly after, lol). This former CIA dude, or “CI-officer” like he says it, has a tip that can get you out of a lot of trouble should you ever get robbed or held up.

Carry a dummy wallet, with a few bucks, a bunch of expired bank cards (or rather the cardboard credit cards that these companies send you when they want you to apply) and so on. You can literally toss it at the person if you ever encounter someone who demands your money. Great idea! Can buy you enough time to get away safely before they realize that the wallet you threw at them is a decoy.


Does not work in all situations. I was robbed in Florida once where someone took off with my handbag with passport, driving license, bank cards and the lot, so it won’t work for that.

(That said, I instinctively instantly started negotiating and I got all my stuff back minus the 5 dollars or so that I had still left in my wallet. Because I had just shopped at my local Winn-Dixie and was walking home with two grocery bags which made me an easy target.)

Question: what does “watch” stand for in local slang?

There have been many themes in my abuse and one of them seems to have been about a watch. It’s included all sorts of people (well, one sort, mostly) in town constantly asking me for the time. That stopped at some point, but if anyone can tell me what that was about, then please tell me. Thank you.

Is it a warning?

“Watch out!” or “Watch it” or “I’m watching you.” ?

There’ve often been threats over the years and they were always veiled but also almost always followed up on and pretty vicious. I’m thinking of the animal cruelty, specifically.

(I can’t access this site so I can’t see what else it says.)

Why I may indeed be targeted by 4chan/8chan (too?)

The IP addresses I get (presumably on the network that I am forced onto) are ALWAYS blocked – banned – on Wikipedia. Those are usually located in places like Glasgow or Devon or Manchester or Edinburgh. Also, London, but that is not too strange.

I can only edit a page, carry out even the smallest change such as correct a typo, on Wikipedia if I log in with my Wikipedia account.